Friday, February 09, 2007

Quote of the Time Being #8

"Providing the HPV vaccine doesn't promote sexual promiscuity any more than providing the Hepatitis B vaccine promotes drug use," the governor said. "If the medical community developed a vaccine for lung cancer, would the same critics oppose it claiming it would encourage smoking?"

C'mon folks. A little logic please. No, of course taking pills will not cause someone to become sexually active. However, it will provide on less reason to avoid risky behavior, since one of the risks has been eliminated.

It would be the same for cigarettes and cancer. One less risk. Still a risk of heart disease, but as the risk decreases, the decision to persue risky behavior is more likely.

Still not convinced, think about risky behaviors that are acceptable, like sky diving. More folks would do it if you had a fail safe air bag that would deploy under you if your parachute failed.

This logical analysis has nothing to do with whether administering the vaccine is a good idea. It certainly should impinge on whether schools or any government entity should be able to force administration.

C'mon folks. A little logic please. No, of course taking pills will not cause someone to become sexually active. However, it will provide on less reason to avoid risky behavior, since one of the risks has been eliminated.

The problem being:1. I seriously doubt that HPV was the sole, or even main, risk keeping anyone from having sex.2. Condoms already provide decent protection against HPV.3. There are still numerous risks involved in sex, more than enough to scare people.4. People will have sex regardless of the risks, and have since time immemorial.

What the vaccine really helps is #4, the same as birth control, the same as condoms. For the people who would have sex anyway, who are going to bump uglies regardless of the risks, it decreases the risk involved.

But let me put it to you this way: do airbags encourage people to drive recklessly? They've been mandatory in cars for several years now; do more people get into accidents because of them? Do people drive less safely? Do people fail to take other safety precautions because they know that the airbag eliminates one danger?

It's the same with sex. Some people drive when they shouldn't, some people drive recklessly, some people drive as carefully as possible and get t-boned in an intersection. The airbag protects all of them equally, and we shouldn't assume that everyone's going to go tooling around corners at 80 miles an hour on icy roads without seatbelts, just because their cars have airbags.

If people, particularly teenagers, thought and behaved logically, your argument would hold more water. As it stands, if a teenager is refraining from sex because of the threat of STDs, there are still a dozen others with far worse consequences and far less preventability out there to reinforce that decision. But no High School senior is going to throw out their condoms and diaphragms because they finally came out with a wart vaccine.